Professional hair treatment centers such as beauty salons and barber shops conventionally use a basin conventionally called a shampoo bowl on which a patron rests their head and neck so that their hair may be treated. The usual basin or shampoo bowl will have a specially formed region in the form of a concave indentation that is supposed to fit the head or neck portion of a patron so that the patron may rest his head and neck thereon while being treated. This specially formed or indented region is supposed to co-operate with the patron's head and neck area so as to prevent hair treatment materials from falling outside the basin area during a hair treatment operation. The problem with such an arrangement is that the patron may move during the operation and thereby allow water or other hair treatment materials to spill over the rim of the basin and fall to the floor. Additionally, the specially formed region or indentation on the basin that is supposed to prevent such spillage, is usually designed to do so by indenting the special region in a concave fashion so as to provide a form fitting seal between the patron's head or neck area and the special indented region of the basin. The special shaping usually takes the form of a concave indentation rigidly contoured in the upper rim of the basin. The rigidly formed indentation cannot cope with the patron's movements and it does not take into account the fact that most people do not rest their head and necks in the same manner on the shaped region of the rim. Further, the rigid indentations do not take into account that everyone's head and neck areas are formed differently, so that one particular contoured shape that fits one person will not necessarily fit another. Because of this the spillage of hair treatment materials still occurs, and the floors of salons and other hair treatment places still continue to be flooded.
A still further problem with the arrangements of the prior art is the fact that the chairs that fit adjacent to the basins, allowing the patron to rest their head on the basin, leave a gap between the basin and the back of the chair, for spilled hair treatment materials to fall directly to the floor.
Others have addressed this problem, examples of these attempts are exhibited in the following U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,501,829 granted to Rugh; 2,172,589 granted to Middleton; 2,163,755 granted to Labruzzo; 3,731,325 granted to Guarrasi; and 2,013,823 granted to Chancer.
Having spent 49 years in this business, I have come to believe that the problem has not been solved by attacking it in the manner represented by the above attempts.
Non-analogous situations are shown by U.S. Pat. Nos. 79,115 granted to Havanagh; 4,369,532 granted to Houchins et al; and a French patent 1.280.943 to Barry.